BRAZIL. This vast country is rich in products useful in the arts and manufactures. Besides the ordinary kinds of vegetable food, the natives cultivate the cocoa-plant, the mate plant, coffee, sugar, cotton, tobacco, indigo, ginger, pepper, cinnamon, cloves, vanilla, sar saparilla, caoutchouc, copaiva, copal, various fruits and also various dye-plants and timber trees. The herds of horned cattle are immense ; and their produce, consisting, besides live stock, of hides, jerked beef, tallow, horns, and horn tips, is exported in great quantities. As soon as the animals are skinned, the hides are spread on the ground, slightly salted, and dried in the sun. The flesh is cut into thin slices, salted, and dried in the air, for consumption in the northern pro vinces. A little butter and cheese is made.
The Brazilians produce many useful sub stances from the animals by which they are surrounded. They prepare spermaceti and oil from some of their fish ; they salt and dry many of their larger fish, to serve as a store of provisions ; they make sausages from the flesh of the manati, a peculiar kind of fish ; they produce a fatty substance from the eggs of turtles by roasting ; and they fry one species of ant as an article of food.
The mineral wealth of Brazil is consider able, but limited to a few articles, of which the chief are gold and iron, diamonds and topazes, and salt. Before the beginning of the last century the quantity of gold obtained was inconsiderable, but it increased rapidly. The greatest quantity was found between 1753 and 1763, but it afterwards decreased. The grains of gold in the sand being nearly ex hausted, and capital being wanted to work the veins in the mountains, the produce fell off; but, since the introduction of British capital into some of the provinces, the produce of the mines has increased. Iron is very abundant : in some places there are whole mountains of ore; but up to the present time it has been worked on an extensive scale only in two or three places. In 1813 a government iron foundry was abandoned as an unprofitable speculation. No silver has been found, and only slight indications of copper, lin, and quicksilver. Platinum occurs in some places.
Lead and cobalt are more common.
No country:probably is richer in diamonds than Brazil, but hitherto they have only been found in the rivers. The diamond district, or the district of Tejuco, where by far the greatest quantity of diamonds has been found, is situ ated under S. lat. ; and here many hundreds of persons are employed by the government in searching for diamonds. In about a century from 1730 to 1830, it is sup posed that the diamonds found must have been worth three millions sterling. In another diamond district, that of Abaete, was found in 1791 the great diamond weighing 1381 carats, one of the largest in the world. Diamonds are also found in other districts of Brazil.
The Brazilians obtain their salt from salt steppes or plains. There are here and there patches of salt efflorescence on the surface of the ground. There are also salt springs, and salt steppes which yield salt after a shower of rain.
Internal communication in Brazil is in a very imperfect state. The roads are few, and mostly bad. The rivers offer a fine field for traffic enterprise, but the country is not in a state to develope its own advantages. Steam transit has been partially introduced on one or two of the rivers.
The foreign commerce of Brazil is very large. The vessels of all nations are admit ' ted on the same conditions, and their cargoes pay the same duties. The most important articles of exportation are sugar, coffee, and cotton. The exportation of cocoa, hides, tobacco, rice, horns and horn-tips, (lye-woods, sarsaparilla, and indian-rubber is also consi derable. The smaller articles are isinglass, indigo, castor beans, castor-oil, and • different drugs. The chief ports visited by European vessels are S. Pedro, Santos, Rio Janeiro, Bahia, Pernambuco, Maranhao, Para,Aracaty, Seara, and Parahyba. Rio Janeiro is the chief place of export for coffee, Bahia for sugar, and Pernambuco for cotton.
The British produce and manufactures sent to Brazil in 1810 exceeded 2,000,0001. in value. The exports from Brazil amount to four or five millions sterling per annum ; they are sent to almost every part of Europe and America, and to many African and Asiatic ports.